Word: disconnect
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When Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recently canceled a long-planned donors' dinner, he had the right idea: collecting private money at the apogee of public disgust over the practice is perverse. The White House sees no such disconnect. If, in fact, the sign of a first-rate intellect is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind and still function, then President Clinton is as smart as he wants to be, which unfortunately is not smart enough to know better. For him, fund raising is a no-brainer...
...surprise about-face, U.S. automakers agreed to equip cars with switches necessary to turn off airbags. The auto industry had opposed the plan as unworkable, arguing that it would be nearly impossible to install switches in cars already on the road. Instead, they wanted dealers to allow mechanics to disconnect the devices, which have been linked to the deaths of 36 children and 20 adults since 1992. Fearing lawsuits if someone crashed in a car with an airbag disabled by mechanics, dealers responded with a hard push for switches, which they said would remove their liability by putting the choice...
...inexplicable connect-disconnect of art and life, the name that probably came to mind for most viewers was Theo Huxtable, the only son, who was played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner in Bill Cosby's tremendously popular 1980s sitcom. For more than a decade the Huxtables were America's first family and Bill Cosby was everyone's dad. It was almost natural, however, to confuse real and imagined identities, for Cosby had modeled his television family on his own: a brilliantly accomplished wife, four assertive daughters and one diffident but charming son. The Huxtables were warm, cuddly, comfortable, now and then...
...five points range from allowing consumers to disconnect air bags to requiring that a new generation of smart bags be phased in beginning with the 1999 model year. Martinez says the agency has been logging up to 500 phone calls a day from worried drivers and passengers who want to shut off or disable the safety devices. "When we take the time to explain how to use them properly," he says, "the vast majority [of callers] regain their comfort with air bags." However, the recent spate of publicity has taken its toll on public confidence. Declared a bystander outside...
...raised hackles among safety advocates and their traditional foes, the Big Three automakers in Detroit. "It's bad public policy," says Joan Claybrook, who led the NHTSA in the Carter Administration and now runs the watchdog group Public Citizen. "For the government to tell people it is O.K. to disconnect their air bags is a terrible idea that sends the wrong signal." Claybrook blames Washington and the car manufacturers for failing to instruct the public in basic matters such as never allowing small children to ride in front seats and wearing seat belts to make the air bags most effective...